This blog adds to the three-book series, Rackets, which advocates the legalization of drugs & gambling, and prostitution. Brian Saady's work shines a light on legal "rackets," i.e. crony capitalism, and the government "racketeers" that pose as the solution for problems caused by the government. You'll see that our political and criminal justice systems are inadvertently designed to fail...like rackets.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Two weeks ago, the mayor of Cuidad Juarez, Armando Cabada Alvídrez, threatened to kill a
prominent local journalist, Hector Gonzalez. The mayor was brazen enough that
he made these threats in public and threw a punch at one of Gonzalez’s
companions.

This was nothing
new for Gonzalez. As a matter of fact, this type of intimidation against
reporters is widespread throughout Mexico. Also, the crimes against journalist
are rarely punished. Of the 426 reported instances of violence against
journalists in 2016, only 0.25% of those cases resulted in a conviction! (My free
ebook,
“America’s
Drug War is Devastating Mexico,” goes into full detail explaining the
severity of the problem.)

This is an issue
in which the worlds of organized crime and politics intermingle. It’s well
known that reporting on crime in Mexico is a dangerous occupation because the
cartels enforce a brutal form of censorship. However, in many instances, reporting
on politics can be just as, if not more, dangerous. The reason is that the
cartels have deeply corrupted politics and the government provides little to no
protection for journalists.

My last book
focused on Mexico, but this is a problem throughout Latin America and one of
the primary causes of this violence is the war on drugs. Last month, a
Guatemalan newspaper reporter, Laurent Ángel Castillo Cifuentes, and
radio station worker, Luis Alfredo de León Miranda, were murdered.

Their bodies were discovered in Suchitepéquez with clear signs of torture. This coastal-region state is a major
transshipment point for South American cocaine. Consequently, the area is
overrun with organized crime and reporters have faced extreme violence in this region. The Associated Press had previously reported that 10 journalists had
been killed in this one state over the last ten years.

Nonetheless, the
U.S. government has a complicit role in this wave of violence. Clearly, the prohibition
of drugs in the U.S. has created a culture of black market violence throughout
Latin America. Worst of all, the U.S. has aided, supported, armed, and financed
some of the most corrupt governments throughout Latin America as long as these
countries have been geopolitical allies.

There are too
many examples of this hypocrisy to list in a blog post. However, since
Guatemala is the current focus, we’ll examine the U.S. government’s
relationship with the last President of Guatemala, Otto Perez Molina.

Molina received
training at the infamous School of the Americas
(now WHINSEC) in Fort Benning, GA. This former general was involved with
numerous human rights abuses during the U.S.-supported Civil War in Guatemala, including
the Ixil
massacre. As a matter of fact, many historians identify this Civil War as a
genocide because the vast majority of victims of government death squads were
indigenous civilians.

Nonetheless, a 2007
WikiLeaks document
during his presidential campaign shows that U.S. officials were aware of
information connecting Molina with the country’s top drug cartel. However, they
weren’t highly concerned based on this
quote from the document.

“Given that Guatemala is awash in narco-money, it
is improbable that none of it has found its way into Perez Molina's campaign,
but we currently have no grounds to suspect that Perez Molina knowingly
accepted narco-funds.”

Ultimately, it
turned out that the rumors were well substantiated. Molina is currently in jail
on charges of corruption. His Vice President, Roxana Baldetti, is also in jail awaiting
trial for drug and corruption charges. She reportedly accepted a $250,000 bribe
from Los Zetas. Likewise, the Minister of Interior, Mauricio Lopez
Bonilla, reportedly received a $1.5 million bribe
from Los Zetas.

This same destructive political dynamic with U.S. complicity
is visible throughout Latin American. Much of my work has focused on exposing
these truths, particularly in El
Salvador, Honduras,
Peru,
Colombia,
etc. (Please read and share the articles from the links in the previous
sentence. However, for a more thorough explanation, grab a copy of my book, The
Drug War: A Trillion Dollar Con Game, which will make it abundantly clear
that the drug war is often nothing more than a geopolitical bargaining chip.)